A couple of years ago, I picked up No Man's Sky on Gryphon's recommendation, and have had fun with it.

Late last night, I checked the release notes, and they are re-running several of the Expeditions, two weeks each.

The first one is Beachhead, which ends with players getting the SSV Normandy SR1 as your ship. Very nice, since I missed it the first time around

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mszWOQ-DC8Q

>Late last night, I checked the release notes, and they are re-running
>several of the Expeditions, two weeks each.

Oh cool. Hopefully I'll be able to pick up some that I missed, once my new machine gets here.

(There has been a great odyssey of weirdness with my gaming system for the last few months. The new system arriving this week, UPS willing, is hopefully its endpoint. Maybe I'll rant about that somewhere else later.)

>The first one is Beachhead, which ends with players getting the SSV
>Normandy SR1 as your ship.

Just to note, the expedition prize Normandy joins your fleet if you have a Freighter, at which point you can send it on missions and stuff. You never get to go aboard, she's just there in the formation when she's not out on assignment. I was slightly disappointed to learn that, so I thought I should make sure expectations were set accordingly, if anybody here didn't already know that. Still super cool, but you don't get to tool around the galaxy in her with Shepard and the gang. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>>The first one is Beachhead, which ends with players getting the SSV
>>Normandy SR1 as your ship.
>
>Just to note, the expedition prize Normandy joins your fleet if
>you have a Freighter, at which point you can send it on missions and
>stuff. You never get to go aboard, she's just there in the formation
>when she's not out on assignment. I was slightly disappointed to
>learn that, so I thought I should make sure expectations were set
>accordingly, if anybody here didn't already know that. Still super
>cool, but you don't get to tool around the galaxy in her with Shepard
>and the gang. :)

FWIW, if anybody is still playing Destiny 2 aside from me, the N7 Alliance Pack (the EDI Ghost Shell, the M7 Mako Sparrow, and Normandy SV2 Jumpship) is free this weekend. The Mass Effect armor ornament sets (liara warlock, Shepard Titan, Garrus Hunter) probably still cost Silver, though. (Which doesn’t matter to me because I bought them when they first came out because my Titan Arisa (Shepard) wore them for a while).

—- Philip

	Philip J. Moyer Contributing Writer, Editor and Artist (and Moderator) -- Eyrie Productions, Unlimited CEO of MTS, High Poobah Of Artwork, and High Priest Of the Church Of Aerianne -- Magnetic Terrapin Studios "Insert Pithy Comment Here" Fandoms -- Fanart -- Fan Meta Discussions

>FWIW, if anybody is still playing Destiny 2 aside from me, the
>N7 Alliance Pack (the EDI Ghost Shell, the M7 Mako Sparrow, and
>Normandy SV2 Jumpship) is free this weekend. The Mass Effect armor
>ornament sets (liara warlock, Shepard Titan, Garrus Hunter) probably
>still cost Silver, though. (Which doesn’t matter to me because I
>bought them when they first came out because my Titan Arisa (Shepard)
>wore them for a while).
>

I think I do have it installed still after I checked it out when Edge of Fate came out (And found most of last years content once again deleted and the interface even messier than ever, dammit Bungle...)

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

A Mako-fied Sparrow makes too much dang sense...

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

Just got the game set up on my new laptop, and... most of my saves are missing. They don't seem to be in the Steam Cloud. I do have both of the drives from the system that died, since they were swapped out and returned to me in the first of the manufacturer's failed attempts to repair it, but I have no idea where on them local save files might be. I guess I'll have to get them into enclosures and start hunting.

Steam says I've got more than 900 hours in this game, and one of the lost saves accounted for at least a quarter of that. Starting over isn't the worst thing in the world, but I've got a lot of stuff I really like on that one... :(

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

LAST EDITED ON Nov-17-25 AT 06:56 PM (EST)
 
Looks like it's

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\HelloGames\NMS\

and *probably* 'DefaultUser', but might be else.

>Looks like it's
>
>C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\HelloGames\NMS\
>
>and *probably* 'DefaultUser', but might be else.

Yep, that's the ticket. I had looked this up online just minutes before you posted, but thanks. :)

--G.
what a relief, I can't even tell you
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I found them!

I'm amazed that worked. Luckily, just copying the contents of the appropriate folder from my old c: in an enclosure to the same place on the new one worked seamlessly. The good ship Baychimo, phantom freighter of the Eissentam Galaxy, flies once more.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I forgot I went through a phase where I ended most of my base names with "State Park". :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

The redux of Expedition 19: Corvette is running right now, I think for another week or so? It's pretty neat. I like the "corvette" mechanic it was designed to introduce, although I had already built a couple in the main game by the time the redux opened.

For those unfamiliar, "corvette" is the name the devs gave to a new class of personal starship introduced in the original run of the expedition. They're bigger than the standard starships that have been in the game all along, but smaller than the companion frigates you can hire to fleet up with your freighter, so the name makes sense in that regard. They're still single-pilot, but other player characters can ride along in multiplayer, and if you have the right piece of gear installed, you can pull multiplayer-capable missions, similar to the ones offered by the Nexus on the Space Anomaly. (These are still runnable single-player, but tend to take a while, since the goals are scaled for several Travelers working together.)

My favorite thing about them, though, is that they're modular. The Salvage Containers you've long been able to dig up on some worlds now contain, in addition to the usual random treasures, equally random pieces of corvettes. There are three basic "classes"--Thunderbird, which is very rough-n-ready in style (think Millennium Falcon interiors--different art style, same "get it going with a hammer" aesthetic); Ambassador, which is quite swanky; and Titan, which is sort of in-between. In spite of the names, everything works together, so you can mix-and-match the pieces. You could have, for example, a Titan-class main body (cockpit, hab module, rear ramp) with an Ambassador-class hab on top as the "captain's quarters". I did that with the first one I built, which I naturally named the same as my favorite ship from Elite Dangerous, the good ship Bohica Maru. :) There are also a ton of cosmetic bits and bobs you can use to modify the aesthetics.

Anyway, I think they're neat. My main complaint is that they're slightly bugged right now, in that you can spend a bunch of time rearranging the techs so that they're all optimized (tech modules next to others of their type get a cumulative bonus), and the next time you log in they're all scrambled randomly around again. I've reported it on Hello's Zendesk bug reporting page, as I hope other Travelers have as well. A very similar issue is listed as fixed in the current version's patch notes, but it only mentions multiplayer; perhaps they were not aware that it happens with multiplayer turned off as well.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Hello Games _is_ using NMS to troubleshoot mechanics for their next game, with the Corvettes being a testbed for multicrew sailing ships.

IIRC, basically all they've been doing in the game for the past few years has been expressly for the purpose of testing systems, mechanics, and so on intended to make their next work function.

... but they still get massive kudos for making all of these updates free.

Quoth the fandom: ' Please, Sean, no, I have money!'

Just finished the expedition. Corvettes are interesting things.

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

I liked the expedition enough that I ran it again on a second save.

Behold my newest creation, the good ship Priestess of the Void.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

WAH.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

(In regards to picture #3)

"Shuttle is tired. Shuttle wants belly rubs!"

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

Never saw a fire tornado before I ran across this one on a superheated volcanic planet. That would be beautiful if it wasn't utterly terrifying.

One of the "races" in NMS (actually kind of an offshoot of one of the others, but we don't need to get into that) is the Autophages, a mechanical species who build their own bodies out of whatever junk they can scavenge. (How the first one gets built in this process is... not fully examined.) Their planetary settlements (one of which you can sign up to manage), have a really funky recycled aesthetic. The other day I noticed this out next to one of the starship landing pads, which was under renovation at the time.

I don't even want to know how old those CRTs are in the NMS universe. :)

Speaking of the Autophages, the rest of their tech has a similar recycled style. If you get friendly enough with them, you can build your own Multi-Tool staff out of stuff you can buy from them. One of the staff headpieces you can find is... literally a head. Like, a robotic cranium, apparently from an old Autophage carapace that was decommissioned and replaced by its original inhabitant at some point.

Gentlemen and/or ladies, I give you: the Head of V3C-N4.

Oh yeah, you can also remodel your character into the likeness of an Autophage, once you've unlocked the parts. (The in-game text claims that these are just "appearance overrides" that change how others perceive you, and you're not literally turning yourself into a robot.) Here I've modded Zebulon into a typical specimen, for reference.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

LAST EDITED ON Feb-18-26 AT 03:31 PM (EST)
 
In the current expedition, Remnant, you get a module that converts your Multi-Tool into a Half-Life 2-style gravity gun, and a mod that changes the Colossus--the big, clumsy Exocraft nobody ever really found much of a use for--into a flatbed cargo hauler. With those two tools, you can pick up the newly added chunks of industrial waste and scrap that are scattered around the expedition planet and convey them to a recycling center, where they can be converted into nanites. Your starship is inaccessible and you can't buy another one, so you're stuck on this one planet until you're finished cleaning it up. Well, part of it, anyway.

It's pretty cool, although the act of hauling the scrap to the recycling center is a bit nerve-racking. The terrain of the expedition planet is... not ideally suited to hauling unsecured, destructible cargo on an open flatbed truck. It has edges, stuff doesn't just roll off it randomly, but hit a big enough bump going fast enough and that stuff is going to fly everywhere. And may the Atlas help you if you drive into a cave. This planet has a lot of caves. And you don't have the Exosuit module that lets you teleport your Exocraft, so if you get the Colossus hopelessly stranded down a hole, you're going to have to walk back to wherever the Exobay is and resummon it.

Here's the Colossus with my two favorite mods you can earn during the expedition. I'm pretty sure they're just cosmetic, but it felt like it handled the terrain a little more steadily rigged out like this...

she's got legs... she knows how to use them

... and the industrial camo paint scheme looks perfect in orange and yellow.

In other news, I captured a pirate ship! It came with one of NMS's usual random procedural names, so there was only one thing I could call it, really.

I've accumulated quite a fleet, which I suspect must be at least a little intimidating when the whole gang booms out of hyperspace in an unsuspecting system.

any fruit to declare?{/font]

The frigates with the red "sails" are lesser pirate ships I've picked up along the way; the one surrounded by the green haze is the Ship of the Damned, which was an expedition reward (I think for the Spooky Season one whose name I've forgotten). Normandy and my two Living Ship frigates are in there too, but they're harder to spot at this scale.

Also, I discovered a while ago that if you access a holocomm tower when you don't have a mission that calls for it, you have the opportunity to read the logs of the last message it was used to send.

I showed you my carapace, please respond

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.